The Man Who Invented Christmas

TIME OUT SAYS

If you can suspend your disbelief – as The Man Who Invented Christmas wants you to – and roll with the idea that finding inspiration for a novel is a lot like being on safari, a deeper movie comes into view. The storyline – will Charles Dickens make his publishing deadline? – is the least interesting thing here.

Instead, as directed by TV journeyman Bharat Nalluri, the movie vaults into a psychological realm that plumbs the same subtext of Dickens’ famous Christmas book itself: Do we notice those less fortunate?

It pushes its hero off his pedestal but delivers him to a much better place, the company of fellow citizens. Joshua Rothkopf